The Early Book Society NewsletterFall 2006

Kalamazoo 2007
EBS is pleased to announce its sponsorship of six sessions at the 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies. The Congress, at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, will be held from May 10-13, 2007. The EBS sessions are:

Abstracts (1-2 pp), letters of commitment, and a-v requests (please access the form through www.wmich.edu/medieval) should be sent to Martha Driver no later (preferably earlier) than September 15, 2006. EBS members wishing to serve as session chairs or respondents should send a note by the September date to the university or e-mail address. Abstracts are to be sent to Dept of English, Pace University, 41 Park Row, New York, NY 10038 or FAXed to 212-346-1754 (English Department). Inquiries are welcome.
E-mail: MDriver@pace.edu or marthadriver@hotmail.com.

EBS Conference 2007
Plans are currently underway for the tenth biennial EBS conference, titled “Codices and Community: Networks of Reading and Production, 1350-1550,” to be held at the University of Salford and Chetham’s Library, Manchester, from July 7 - July 11, 2007.
The conference is hosted by Sue Powell, University of Salford, with visits and sessions to be held at Chetham’s Library (once the home of Elizabethan mathematician John Dee) and the John Rylands Library, Manchester, which is reopening after lengthy renovation in April, 2007. The Lord Mayor of Salford has offered a civic reception. The EBS conference banquet will be held at The Lowry, a spectacular venue that includes an important art gallery, on Salford Quays. On July 11, EBS conferees are invited on an optional trip to Stonyhurst College, where the librarians (including Jan Rhodes, whose work on Bridgettine materials will be known to many of us) will prepare an exhibition and speak about the collection. A country pub lunch will follow. The dates overlap those of the Leeds conference to some extent (Leeds begins July 9 and ends July 11) but were decided upon after consultation with Chetham’s and also with Stonyhurst, along with conference organizers at York and elsewhere. Manchester and Salford are a quick trip by train to Leeds (approx. 45 minutes) which might be worth taking into consideration by scholars speaking at Leeds when registering for the EBS conference. Please mark the EBS dates, July 7-11, on your calendar.

Proposals to be sent by November 15, 2006
Proposals may consider any aspect of the history of manuscripts and printed books from 1350-1550, including the copying and circulation of models and exemplars, style, illustration, and/or the influence of readers and patrons, artists, scribes, printers. Special consideration will be given to proposals considering the circulation of MSS and early printed books within and/or beyond specific communities of readers, as well as on transitions from MS to print or print to MS. Proposals for 10-minute papers describing recent discoveries, bibliographic notes or MS and rare book collections for the round-table discussion are needed. Speakers may give a short paper in this session as well as a longer one. The conference is open to all EBS members. Please indicate whether you will need a slide projector, OHP, or computer equipment in your proposal.

American and Canadian abstracts (1-2 pp) should be sent for consideration no later than November 15, 2006, to Martha Driver (EBS, English Department, 41 Park Row, New York, New York 10038-1598) or FAXed to 212-346-1754 (office). Members in Great Britain and abroad may submit abstracts by the same date to Sue Powell, School of ESPaCH, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT UK. Inquiries previous to submission date are most welcome: MDriver@pace.edu, S.Powell@salford.ac.uk.

Manchester and Salford
Manchester, said to be “the shopping capital” of the UK, is readily accessible by train and plane. The city has wonderful restaurants, especially ethnic restaurants (try Café Istanbul on Bridge Street or Rajdoot Tandori on Albert Square), theater, museums and splendid Victorian architecture. Salford, the setting for Coronation Street, is a small city set on a park about two miles outside Manchester and is home not only to the university but to some good pubs and restaurants. From Euston Station, the trip to Manchester is two hours and fifteen minutes. Manchester International Airport is 15 miles from the University of Salford, and there are regular, direct train services to and from the University. A taxi from Manchester to Salford costs about £4; one may also reach Salford from Manchester by taking a train to Salford Crescent station that runs through the campus between Peel Park and Frederick Road. From Manchester Piccadilly, the train service is about 10 minutes to Salford Crescent. There are direct train services to and from Manchester Airport, Manchester Picadilly and Victoria. For more about Salford, check www.salford.gov.uk.

En suite student rooms will be available at Constantine Court on Peel Park at the University of Salford; these may also be booked for a day or two before and after the conference for those wishing to tour the area or consult books in Chetham’s or Rylands.
Conference sessions will be held mainly on the University of Salford campus. One day of sessions will take place in Chetham’s with a visit to Rylands and tour of Manchester and a Chinese banquet in Manchester to follow that evening. For those wishing to stay in Manchester, a list of moderately priced hotels will be sent, along with the registration information.

JEBS 10 in Progress
Longer papers (35 - 40 pp.), with endnotes and a full Works Cited list, are now being collected for JEBS 10, forthcoming in summer 2007. These are substantial essays on any aspect of the history of manuscripts and/or printed books, with emphasis on the period between 1350 and 1550. Essays should be sent for consideration in duplicate with an abstract to Martha Driver not later than the end of October. Format should follow the Chicago Manual of Style, with endnotes and a complete Works Cited list (including publisher as well as city and date of publication). A limited number of illustrations may be included with complete captions and permissions citations; xeroxes of these should initially be sent with papers for consideration to the editor. Notes on recent discoveries (4 -10 pp), highlighting little-known or recently uncovered texts or images, may be sent by the same deadline to Linne Mooney, Department of English and Related Literatures, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King’s Manor, York Y01 7EP UK. Inquiries are welcome: LRM3@York.ac.uk. Please send brief descriptions (150-450 words) of little- or lesser-known collections and libraries of interest to the Society to Martha Driver, Early Book Society, Department of English, Pace University, 41 Park Row, New York, NY 10038. Members of the Early Book Society who are recent authors may send review books for consideration to Susan Powell, Reviews Editor, Department of English, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT UK. Sue may be contacted at S.Powell@salford.ac.uk. For general information, contact M.Driver@pace.edu.

Subscription InformationJEBS 10, the current issue under preparation, is part of timely membership renewal; further copies must be ordered separately. If you are ordering extra copies, you can pay with VISA (in U.S. dollars) using the order form that can be downloaded from the Pace UP site at http://www.pace.edu/press. Libraries may purchase copies directly from Ingram Library Services (1-800-937-5300). A membership renewal form for 2006-2007, which includes the cost of JEBS 10, may be found at http://www.nyu.edu/projects/EBS/MembershipForm.html and at http://www.nyu.edu/projects/EBS/MembershipForm.pdf. Members are asked, however, to pay their dues promptly. All members are encouraged to join (for the academic year) not later than the annual business meeting at Western Michigan (Friday, May 11, 2007), so the proper number of orders can be given the Press on return. UK and Continental payments are made to Linne Mooney, Department of English and Related Literatures, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King’s Manor, York Y01 7EP UK. E-mail: LRM3@York.ac.uk, but before the May deadline, please, if you wish to include the Journal with your subscription for this year.

Taylor to Kick Off New EBS Book SeriesThe Making of Poetry: Poetic Anthologies at the End of the Middle Ages by Jane H. M. Taylor is the first volume to be published in the EBS series, Texts and Transitions: Studies in the History of MSS and Printed Books through Brepols. The series currently includes several manuscripts in various stages of completion that will also be forthcoming shortly. The editors seek monographs dealing with late medieval manuscripts and early printed books to about 1550, particularly those that explore the transition from manuscript to print and questions to do with readers and literacy, owners and patronage, the dissemination of texts, and the reception of medieval texts. A ‘text’ may be either a word or an image, where a picture serves also as a text that can be read and interpreted. The focus is mainly on manuscripts and books produced in England or for the English market, and closely related French and Continental works. Monographs of about 250 - 300 pages, collections of previously published essays by one author (updated and revised), or in some cases essay collections with a clearly unified theme or one main subject are within the purview of the EBS series. It is anticipated that most of the monographs to be published will include illustrations. Pictures are reproduced in black and white, though color illustrations may be included in special cases. Authors are responsible for purchasing photographs and securing the permissions to reproduce them. The immediate organizers and general editors of the series are Martha Driver (Pace University, NY) and Derek Pearsall (Harvard University, emeritus), with an advisory board of scholars expert in the various fields of late medieval and early modern literature and culture and in the history of manuscripts and books. Those interested in inquiring about submissions should contact Simon Forde at Brepols simon.forde@brepols.net, Derek Pearsall derek.apearsall@fsnet.co.uk or Martha Driver mdriver@pace.edu.

Jean Preston, Long-Time EBS Member, Dies
Jean F. Preston, long-time member and supporter of the Early Book Society and staunch attender of the international conferences, has died at her home in Oxford. Jean was for many years the manuscripts librarian at the Huntington Library, compiling with Sue Hodson the Guide to Literary Manuscripts in the Huntington Library. She later became the rare books and manuscripts librarian at Princeton University, publishing with William Stoneman and Adelaide Bennett, the Guide to Western Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at Princeton University, as well as articles relating to the collections in the Princeton University Library Chronicle. With Laetitia Yeandle, Jean edited English Handwriting, 1400-1650: An Introductory Manual, which remains one of the important resources in this field. Her articles appeared in Chronica, The Library, Huntington Library Quarterly and Gutenberg Jahrbuch. Numbering systems in medieval manuscripts and early printed books particularly interested her. Jean’s lovely little home in Oxford was filled with treasures: Jean was the largest private collector of manuscript leaves by the Spanish forger, and she owned several important pre-Raphaelite paintings. During her years at Princeton, I often saw Jean at events in New York relating to the Middle Ages, whether exhibitions, concerts or mystery plays. She was a pleasant companion and an indefatigable traveler, recently going to China with the Bibliophiles. She will be missed.

Calls for PapersExploring Pilgrimage, a one-day interdisciplinary symposium on pilgrims and pilgrimage, Dept of History, University of Sheffield, 25 November 2006. Papers on all aspects invited from all disciplines. Possible subjects might include: religious practices, political processes, social and economic dynamics, landscape study, illness and healing, travel, support structures, hostels, shipping, armed protection, literary and artistic culture. Proposals of 250 words for 20-min papers should be sent by October 1 to Morn Capper m.capper@sheffield.ac.uk or Geoff Little hip99gl@sheffield.ac.uk or to The Department of History, The University of Sheffield, 387 Glossop Road, Sheffield S10 2TN UK.

Making an Audience, First International Making Books, Shaping Readers Conference, April 18th - 20th 2007, University College, Cork. Papers might focus on the audiences texts invite; on how shifts in methods of production record a shift in the role of the reader from medieval to contemporary times; on how the act of reading is inscribed in a book; or on how a text's transmission over time affects how it is read. We are also concerned with tracing the actual reader/audience of a text through marks and annotations. Scholars in all disciplines are invited to submit proposals (300-500 words) on any aspect of how audiences are made via various forms of textual materialities. Accepted abstracts will be published on the MBSR website; selected essays may be published in conference proceedings. Abstracts to be sent by October 27, 2006, to Making Books, Shaping Readers Conference, Dept. of English, University College Cork, Ireland, or (preferably) by email to mbsr@ucc.ie. All queries can be directed to the organizers, Siobhán Collins, Carrie Griffin, and Mary O' Connell at mbsr@ucc.ie. Website: http://www.ucc.ie/en/mbsr.

Writing England: Books 1100-1200, University of Leicester, 6-8 July 2007. Keynote speakers include Rodney M. Thomson and Ralph Hanna. Proposals from scholars working on 12c writers, book production and use of and responses to texts in Latin, Insular French and English are welcome. Send a title and abstract (maximum 150 words) for a 20-minute paper, with contact details, to Professor Elaine Treharne, English Department, The University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH emt1@leicester.ac.uk by 31 October 2006. Website: www.le.ac.uk/ee/em1060to1220/index.htm.

French in English Manuscripts and French Manuscripts in England, Eleventh York Manuscripts Conference, 17-20 July 2007. The eleventh York Manuscripts Conference will be held at the King’s Manor in York from July 17-20, 2007. The theme of the conference will be French influence on manuscripts produced in England in the later Middle Ages. Topics include: manuscripts written in England in the French language; French manuscripts and incunables imported into England; French scribes and illuminators working in England or English manuscripts produced on the continent; French influence on script and/or illumination. Please submit proposed titles and brief abstracts for the Eleventh York Manuscripts Conference by the end of November 2006 to Linne R. Mooney, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King’s Manor, York YO1 7EP UK. Email: LRM3@york.ac.uk.

(The conference is timed to follow from another at York, The French of England: Linguistic Accommodation and Cultural Hybridity, c1100-c1500. This conference explores linguistic, literary and cultural inter-relations of the French of England with Middle English and continental French, and includes attention to the question of training graduate medievalists in this field (13-16 July, 2007), organized by Professor Jocelyn Wogan-Browne.)

Latin and Vernacular in Renaissance Iberia III: Ovid from the Middle Ages to the Baroque, University of Nottingham, 19-20 April 2007. Twenty-minute papers in English or Spanish on the pervasiveness of Ovid in the Iberian Peninsula from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries on various themes that might include: commentaries and translations, bilingual editions, Ovid in school and university curricula; Ovidian imagery. Proposals to be sent by December 1 to Alejandro Coroleu, Dept of Hispanic and Latin American Studies, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD UK alejandro.coroleu@nottingham.ac.uk.

Mythes à la cour, mythes pour la cour (Courtly Mythologies), XIIth Congress of ICLS, 29 July to 4 August, 2007, Lausanne and Geneva. ICLS members are invited to submit abstracts of 250 words on the themes of exemplary figures, gender definitions and courtly mythologies, rites and performances of power and questions of style and rewriting before December 31, 2006. For further information about ICLS, email icls2007@unil.ch. Website: www.unil.ch/icls2007 or www.clas.ufl.edu/icls. Questions may be directed to Barbara Wahlen, Faculte de Lettres, Section de Français, Bureau 3020.1, CH-1015 Lausanne-Dorigny, Switzerland (FAX +41-21-692-2915).

Grants Supporting MS and Book ResearchHeckman Research Stipends are offered by the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, Collegeville, Minnesota, for research at the library. Available to graduate students or those within three years of completing a terminal master’s or doctoral degree for periods of up to six months, the stipends are in varying amounts up to $1500. For further information, see http://www.hmml.org.

The Camargo Foundation Fellowship Program, based in Cassis, France, promotes scholarship in the humanities and social sciences related to French and francophone cultures. Applicants from all countries are welcome. For further information and to get an application form, write to the Camargo Foundation, US Secretariat, 125 Park Square Ct., 400 Silbey St., St. Paul, MN 55101-1928 www.camargofoundation.org. Submission deadline is 01/15/07.

The Newberry Library in Chicago invites applicants for two types of research funding: long-term fellowships with a stipend of up to $40,000 and short-term fellowships, intended for postdoctoral scholars and Ph.D. candidates outside the Chicago area who have a specific need to use the Newberry collections. For more information and to download application materials, visit www.newberry.org. For materials to be sent by mail, write to: Committee on Awards, Newberry Library, 60 West Walton St, Chicago, IL 60610-3380 USA. E-mail: research@newberry.org.

NEH Research Fellowships
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Saint Louis University, 2006-7
The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies invites applications for six fellowships of five weeks duration to conduct research in the collections of the Vatican Film Library or in the rare book and manuscript collections of Pius XII Memorial Library at Saint Louis University. Applicants must have the doctorate or be a PhD-candidate at the dissertation stage. Topics may be proposed on any subject in the areas of paleography, codicology, illumination, editing, history, philosophy, theology, science, literature, scriptural and patristic studies, Roman and Canon law. Priority will be given applicants with paleographical and linguistic skills. For details on the Vatican Film Library, see http://www.slu.edu/libraries/vfl. For information on rare books and MSS, see
http://www.slu.edu/libraries/pius/archives/collections/collections.html. There is no formal application deadline. Contact: David T. Murphy, Director, CMRS, Saint Louis University, 221 N. Grand Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63103 (314-977-7180, FAX 314-977-3704, cmrs@slu.edu).

Schallek Fellowships and Awards
The Medieval Academy collaborates with the Richard III Society-American Branch in offering a full-year fellowship and five graduate student awards. The fellowship and awards are supported by a generous gift to the Richard III Society from William B. and Maryloo Spooner Schallek. The Schallek Fellowship provides a one-year grant of $30,000 to support Ph.D. dissertation research in any relevant discipline dealing with late-medieval Britain (ca. 1350-1500). The annual application deadline is 15 October.

The Schallek awards support graduate students conducting research in any relevant discipline dealing with late-medieval Britain (ca. 1350-1500). The $2,000 awards help defray research expenses such as the cost of travel to research collections and the cost of photographs, photocopies, microfilms, and other research materials. The cost of books or equipment (e.g., computers) is not included. The annual application deadline is 15 February. Applicants to both Schallek programs must be members of the Medieval Academy. Graduate students who are members of the Medieval Academy and who seek support to research and write Ph.D. dissertations on topics related to medieval Britain before 1350 or on any other medieval topic should apply to the Medieval Academy Dissertation Grant program. For more information, contact the Medieval Academy www.medievalacademy.org.

Constabulary Notes from All Over

Book Uncovered in Irish Bog
This July, The Irish Times and other sources reported the find of an ancient manuscript in a south midlands bog. Dug up by a backhoe was a psalter copied on vellum, with a vellum binding, dated to between 800-1000. Pat Wallace, the director of the National Museum of Ireland, described the discovery as of “staggering importance.” "In my wildest hopes, I could only have dreamed of a discovery as fragile and rare as this. It testifies to the incredible richness of the early Christian civilisation of this island and to the greatness of ancient Ireland," he was quoted as saying. Part of Psalm 83 is legible. The volume is currently undergoing restoration and repair in the museum’s conservation laboratory at Collins Barracks in Dublin.

Librarian Swipes 16c Chaucer From Manchester’s Central Library
According to August reports in Library Journal on-line and the Manchester Evening News, librarian Norman Buckley was caught selling books and manuscripts from the Central Library in Manchester on eBay. Police were able to recover 400 volumes, including a sixteenth-century Chaucer edition valued at £35,000. Security in the Manchester Library has been tightened, with increased restrictions on access to rare book and manuscript collections, in wake of the thefts. Buckley faces sentencing on August 25.

Vesalius in Japan
Christ Church, Oxford, seeks the return of its copy of De Humani Corporis Fabrica, by Andreas Vesalius, which was stolen, along with seventy-three other books, over a three-year period in the mid-1990s by Simon Heighes, a university lecturer and expert on baroque music. Heighes was arrested in 1995, jailed and has since resumed his career as a music critic. The book turned up at Nippon Dental University in Japan where it is on display in the Museum of Medicine and Dentistry, reports The Oxford Student. The famous illustrated anatomy was purchased by the Japanese institution in good faith; Japanese law provides only a two-year period in which stolen articles unwittingly bought must be returned. Since the thefts, Christ Church has been re-cataloguing its library, and visitors are no longer permitted access to the older books without supervision.

Venezuelan Documents Found During Raid on Tel Aviv Home
Police seized documents found in the home of Moshe Dahan, along with artworks from the Gesher gallery in Tel Aviv. Estimated to be worth $1 million, papers pertaining to the founding of Venezuela from the period when it was still part of the Spanish empire were discovered in a binder. After they were authenticated by a Venezuelan expert in rare documents, one embassy official commented, "There was great surprise when it became clear that these are authentic writings of major importance to our country." According to haaretz.com, the Israeli online newspaper, the documents were apparently stolen from an Israeli businessman, who bought them at auction in Miami for about $40,000 over 40 years ago. The businessman has requested that the documents to be returned, but the acting Venezuelan ambassador responded that it is against Venezuelan law to trade in documents that rightfully belong to the national archive.

Smiley, the Map Thief, Redux
The much-discussed E. Forbes Smiley who has been profiled in the New Yorker (October 17, 2005) and has caused rare book librarians in the US and UK to recheck their map collections (and often to find some of the finest ones missing!) pleaded guilty to a federal charge of theft in June. He will be sentenced on September 21, 2006, writes Everett Wilkie, who further encourages all persons who love rare manuscripts, books, maps and related materials to write to the two judges in the case: “You do not need to be at one of the libraries affected to have your voice heard in either case. In the federal case, especially, he is charged with cultural theft, and that is a crime against all of us, not just the library from which he stole that map. One reason that it is important that you let your feelings be known is that Smiley's defense team is no doubt lining up letters of support and commendation for this man. Those must be offset by reality.” Wilkie further points out in a recent e-mail that it is very likely neither judge has heard a case against a map thief before and that it is important that they understand the cultural and educational losses such thefts entail in addition to the monetary losses (as well as the increase of restrictions on serious, honest scholars who wish to consult rare materials). The two judges are:

The Old Print Shop Returns Smiley’s Spoils
The Hartford Courant reports that Smiley stole a map made in 1520 by Peter Apian, a German cartographer, from the British Library and sold it to Harry Newman, a former friend and owner of The Old Print Shop in New York. The Old Print Shop lost $461,000 buying back the Apian map and others from their customers in order to return them to the proper owners. Most of the maps stolen by Smiley will be returned to their original owner or institution. Six maps are still held by dealers or collectors who await further proof that Smiley stole their maps and that these are not, in fact, a related print. The FBI has labeled five maps as “unrecoverable.” One of these, a 1532 world map, cut out of the Beinecke copy of Johann Huttich’s Novus Orbis Regionum, was lost in a New York City taxicab.

78 Maps and Documents Missing From Yale Collections
Alice Prochaska, Yale University Librarian
Following the apprehension of E. Forbes Smiley III in the act of stealing maps from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in June 2005, Yale University Library instituted a thorough search through its collections, to determine which other maps might have been stolen. While this search was in progress, we also introduced new, permanent security measures both in the Map Collection in Sterling Memorial Library and in the Beinecke Library. Now that Forbes Smiley has admitted in court to the theft of a total of 97 maps from several libraries, including both the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale, we know which maps we can expect to recover as a result of the government's investigation.

Pending Mr. Smiley's guilty plea, the federal authorities had asked that
Yale not publicly disclose the identity of missing maps. We are now free
to publish the results of our inventory, which was produced by several
staff members working intensively over a period of months to investigate all
possible records, and to carry out an exhaustive check of our holdings of
rare maps. The list of maps missing from the Map Collection in Sterling
Memorial Library is now posted at : http://www.library.yale.edu/MapColl/msgmaps.html.

We believe this list is as complete as possible, and we hope it will be
helpful to the map community, including dealers, collectors and
librarians. If additional material is recovered, or more items are
discovered missing, this list will be edited accordingly.

Yale University would be profoundly grateful for information leading to the recovery of any of these irreplaceable maps. Anyone with such information, or for further information, contact in the first instance Danuta Nitecki (danuta.nitecki@yale.edu), Associate University Librarian for Public Services and Professor Frank Turner (frank.turner@yale.edu), Director of the Beinecke Library. I will also be glad to hear personally from anyone with comments or questions about the Yale Map Collections.

Maps Missing From Houghton Library, Harvard
Any information leading to the recovery of the following maps would be greatly appreciated. Please contact lhcl@fas.harvard.edu if you have information. The maps include:

"A Map of New England" by [John Foster] in William Hubbard, A narrative of the troubles with Indians in New-England. Boston, 1677. *AC6.H8613.677na (A)

(Thanks to Sylvie Merian, Morgan Library librarian, for forwarding much of this information.)

Conferences, Colloquia, Talks, Exhibitions of Interest to EBS Members

Sept 2-5 Teaching Writing, Learning to Write, colloquium on the psychology and sociology of the medieval scribe. Senate House, University of London. Contact: Pamela Robinson Pamela.robinson@sas.ac.uk.

Sept 2-Jan 21 Brush and Ink: The Chinese Art of Writing. Exhibition, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2nd floor, North Wing), New York.

Sept 21-3 "Medieval Multilingualism in England, France, and Italy," an international conference of the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) with the Department of French and Italian of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. Contact: Keith Busby (kbusby@wisc.edu) or Christopher Kleinhenz (ckleinhe@wisc.edu) at Dept. of French and Italian, UW, 618 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Dr., Madison, WI 53706.

Oct 20-1 “Theater and the Visual Arts in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Aspects of Representation,” organized by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CEMERS), at Binghamton University. Theater is to be understood both as text and as performance, including their rapport with the visual arts. Contact: Sandro Sticca, CEMERS, Binghamton Univ., P.O. Box 6000, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000; ssticca@binghamton.edu; adistefa@binghamton.edu).

Nov 23-5"Textual Scholarship and the Material Book: Comparative Approaches," the third International Conference of the European Society for Textual Scholarship, hosted by the Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies, Institute of English Studies, University of London. Contact: Institute of English Studies School of Advanced Study Univ. of London Senate House Malet St. London WC1E 7HU, U.K. (http://www.textualscholarship.org/ests/conference06/index.htm).

Dec 2 “War and Peace in the Middle Ages and Renaissance." The 20th Barnard Medieval and Renaissance Conference, in New York. An interdisciplinary conference on the realities and representations of war and peace. Contact: Laurie Postlewate, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027 (lpostlew@barnard.edu).